Web of Trust browser extensions yanked after proving untrustworthy


Web of Trust browser extensions yanked after proving untrustworthy Earlier in November, a report out of Germany claimed the popular Web of Trust (WoT) browser add-on was selling its users’ browser histories to third-parties without properly anonymizing the data, resulting in the personal identification of Web of Trust users. There was also some debate over whether the company behind WoT (WOT Services) properly informed its users of data collection actions performed by the extension. Web of Trust's web of trust was broken. Following the German-language report, Mozilla yanked Web of Trust from Firefox's add-on catalog. On Sunday, WoT voluntarily pulled down its add-on from the extension libraries of all others browser, including Chrome and Opera. It’s not clear when WoT plans to reintroduce its add-on to all the various browsers it previously supported, including Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, Safari, and others. The impact on you at home: If you're currently using WoT in your browser, it's probably a good idea to manually uninstall it. WoT believes the problem of non-anonymous data leakage to third parties affected only “a very small number of WOT users.” Nevertheless, until WoT has figured out how to correct this problem the add-on just isn’t worth the risk of having your data leaked to third parties. See http://www.pcworld.com/article/3139814/software/web-of-trust-browser-extensions-yanked-after-proving-untrustworthy.html

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